Say your prayers! It’s time for us to talk about a Christmas movie that I saw in theaters when it premiered but do not remember a thing about. Honestly that could account for a bunch of different movies, even some that we may go over in later issues. But this one is special because it takes what seems like a one joke idea and stretches it out over two hours with a very enjoyable cast, leaving you with a confused feeling about whether you enjoyed what you saw or not. What absolute gem am I discussing today? None other than Dear God (1996), a rare miss for director Garry Marshall. It tells the story of a con artist who gets a job in a dead letter office and starts answering the letters addressed to god, and it stars Greg Kinnear, Laurie Metcalfe and so many others.
I know what you’re thinking; dead letter offices are so much fun. If we learned anything from Bartleby, that’s probably it. This is definitely a weird one that I had been meaning to watch again for a long time, and I’m glad I did even just for the cast. Garry Marshall was cranking out hit films at this time, so this box office bomb is definitely a sour note in his repertoire. Regardless, you’ve already read this far so let’s just jump into it.
We start with a mom and son leaving a seaside trailer discussing how they just moved from New Jersey. Next, we cut to Tom Turner (Kinnear) who is leaving an OTB and goes to park in a handicapped parking spot, stealing the tag from the car next to his. He’s some kind of con man and runs a scam on some women from Memphis at a bus depot or something. He meets with some other criminal named Webster (Donal Logue) at a coffeehouse and they discuss how Tom is short on money. Tom is smitten with the waitress at the coffeehouse.
Here come the schemes! During a Christmas parade, Tom dresses as Santa and solicits donations under the guise of sick kids, even soliciting money from nuns, but his plans are to keep the money. He continues running scams on tourists, passerby, whoever. Honestly, I can deal with this being a five-minute concept stretched to two hours if its all just schemes. Whoops, spoke too soon. He tried scamming an undercover cop and he’s arrested.
In court, the stenographer is just tapping on a keyboard, absolutely not typing anything. The court scene is very goofy. The judge is none other than Larry Miller. My man is gonna be in a lot of these issues. Tom suggests the judge drop the charges and the judge discusses how Tom must have the biggest balls on earth to ask for that. The judge sentences Tom to get a 9-5, 40 hour a week job for a year, you know a full-time job. The prosecutor thinks it’s ridiculously low and Tom thinks its excessive. This movie is pretty funny honestly. Tom debates going to jail to avoid working.
Tom heads to the post office where he is assigned to work. He keeps being told to stand behind the yellow line and he can’t comply, so we all know he’s going to get employee of the year. His cousin is some kind of postal officer who gets him a job in the dead letter department. His new boss Vladek (Hector Elizondo) shows him around. Legendary Tim Conway is one of Tom’s coworkers, Dooley, an old postal worker who lost his route for being erratic. Tom is absolutely horrified that he has to work a job and accepts his fate, and I kinda get it, 9-5 desk jobs are as bad as going to the Gulag when it comes to your spirit.
His cool group of coworkers show him where all the mail addressed to famous or fictional beings get dropped. There are bins for Santa, the Tooth Fairy, Elvis, and of course God, or else we wouldn’t have the movie title we have. Tom flirts with Gloria (Maria Pitillo), the café waitress he’s smitten with. He meets her kid. Aw, bonding! And her name is Gloria, that has to be intentional. Oh, this is the lady and kid from the opening scene. Cool. Honestly had no idea what was going on there.
Back at work, Tom begins reading letters addressed to God. They seem to be mostly written by needy families which tugs at Tom’s heartstrings. Rebecca (Laurie Metcalf) tells Tom it’s payday and also that she’s a recovering workaholic. Lucille (Anna Marie Horsford), another one of his coworkers, fills Tom in on everyone’s eccentricities. Vladek makes religious allusions to the CCTV system being omnipresent. Tom seems to be doing okay. There’s a lot of time-filler in this movie.
Dumbass Tom drops the cash from his paycheck in some mail by accident and it ends up going to one of the needy families who had written to God. When Tom goes to press the family for the money back, they mention that God is watching them and he just kinda lets it go and leaves, but not before being witnessed by Rebecca who is over with the family at some meeting or something, I don’t know. Now Rebecca is convinced that Tom is on an inspirational “mission of mercy” to help out the people who are writing the God letters, and she mentions the other coworkers are inspired by him as well. Tom confesses what he was actually doing, but Rebecca thinks that he’s trying to hide a selfless deed, insisting there are no accidents. She wants to do more good deeds with Tom’s help, not understanding Tom gave away his check and is digging himself further in the hole with his loan shark by not earning any money. Tom basically tells her to go fuck herself and Rebecca is off to respond to a letter on her own. Tom seems indifferent. There is still a lot of time left in this movie.
Rebecca takes the family who wrote the letter she has to a petting zoo I guess, but the zookeep is a con artist. Tom shows up pretending to be some kind of petting zoo agent and makes the guy give Rebecca her money back. The zookeep tells Tom he knows the badge is fake but he wants Rebecca out of his hair. Tom takes them to a racetrack to ride horses where Webster and the loan shark Junior (John Pinette) punches Tom in the stomach multiple times for being short on money.
All of Tom’s coworkers seem to care deeply about people. Tom seems indifferent. He visits his mom (Rue McClanahan) in a nursing home where he admits he wants her to be proud of him, but she’s ashamed of him for being a conman and gambling addict. She’s blind and he plays a prank on her involving her orderly Gerald (Coolio…this cast is incredible lets be honest). Tom goes to talk to Gloria and finds out her son is bummed about his dad not being around for the holidays, but Tom bonds with him over mini golf. Gloria’s son places fifty cent bets on his mini golf game so he and Tom already have a lot in common. Gloria is upset that Tom taught her kid to hustle, and Tom has no concept of playing a game for fun and not for monetary gain.
It is at this point my Pluto app crashed and the movie started over without letting me fast forward through commercials. Now I have to sit through the first hour again. Dear god.
Tom’s coworkers put him in charge of the god letters despite his protests that he doesn’t want anything to do with this “project” and asks Rebecca how many federal laws they are breaking by reading the mail of others. Tom goes along with it after seeing the turnout of employees from other departments who want to help. The next letter they read is by a person planning to kill themselves after church this weekend. Some of the workers think this is too difficult an issue to deal with but manage to narrow down the possibilities of where this person could be and make plans to go prevent them from taking their life. We get a montage of the employees at different churches and stuff and Tom listens to a sermon on the parable of Doubting Thomas because this movie is all about subtlety.
They locate an old man in the water under a pier at a popular jump spot and pull him from the water as a group. Turns out they got the right guy and saved him from his fate. He confesses that he is mad they interrupted him because all of his loved ones are dead and he wanted to choreograph the end of his own life. Tom sets him up with his mother, finding a solution for both of their loneliness.
The group has organized all the god letters into a system based on the writer’s needs. We get a nice montage of the group doing good deeds for those in need (with occasional comic relief because it’s a 90’s comedy). Tom takes Gloria on a date for dinner at the empty Hollywood Bowl because despite being so societally adrift that keeping a full-time job for a year is penance for all of his scams, he somehow has the connections to just hang out in empty stadiums whenever he needs to. I guess pre-9/11 America was much laxer on weird loner criminals hanging out alone in large public-serving venues. Tom and Gloria discuss Tom’s childhood and his con artist father who left him and Gloria sees that he is trying to be there for her son aside from his selfish motivations because he knows what it’s like to not have a father on the holidays. We love a scammer with a heart of gold.
As the group continues to do good deeds, the news reports on it discussing “Postal Miracles”. Tom’s apartment is ransacked by Webster and Junior, presumably because he still hasn’t paid them back, but Tom’s coworkers help clean the place back up and Webster shows back up to tell Tom that Junior died after he got hit by a bus. Tom realizes he’s off the hook for his debt and Webster teases Tom for his participation in doing good deeds. Tom tells Webster that he is actually pulling another scheme; that he assumes people will start sending cash through the mail and he can steal it and pay off whoever Webster is in debt to so they can both be freed from their financial bonds. I don’t know why people would be sending money through the mail because the people who are sending letters seem to be in need but maybe Tom is just bluffing to cover up for the fact that he’s getting fulfillment from doing this and doesn’t want to appear soft.
The post office is flooded with people outside who want things done for them, too, but they’re not really miracles. One guy just wants a new motorcycle. The news eats it up, especially as it coincides with the holiday season and they can report about the Christmas spirit. The group answers letters that get more and more vain and have to make a system of importance.
A letter comes with $5,000 cash to be used for good deeds. Okay so maybe Tom was right and I’m just a big idiot for not understanding religious mail service. The group puts Tom in charge of the money and he tells the group to give it back because he believes it’s a set up from the feds to see if they’ll take money out of the mail. Tom tells the group they should lay low and do less deeds thinking that will cause the letters to stop coming, but his coworkers aren’t convinced. Plus, they want to continue doing good deeds.
The actual Postmaster General in D.C. comes on the news to discuss his anger with the situation, as the golden rule of the USPS is not to open anyone’s mail. He vows to find and prosecute the good Samaritans. The news is reporting more “Postal Miracles” despite the group not doing any recently. The group realizes that they have caused a copycat wave of good deeds that are being attributed to the group.
The postal police show up and arrest Idris (Roscoe Lee Browne) for forging a notice on a delivery slip ten days before his pension. Tom goes back to the church where he walked out on the Doubting Thomas sermon and the priest (Toby fucking Huss) discusses faith with Tom. The coworkers (and Gloria) discuss Idris’s arrest and it turns out that in exchange for the postal police dropping the entire investigation, Idris has pled guilty to one count of tampering. Tom doesn’t think it’s fair that Idris takes the fall, even for one count, when all of them participated. None of his coworkers share his sentiment, stating that it isn’t fair that they get themselves in trouble when Idris has already stepped up. Tom quips that they are all shitty people by stating that he wishes he took the jail sentence instead of the job as he would have been around “a better class of people” in jail. Burn dude.
Because it’s the 90’s “One of Us?” by Joan Osborne plays as Tom hits golf balls in the Hollywood Bowl. Why is he in the Hollywood Bowl so often? We get a montage of the coworkers and Webster doing things. The news cuts to Tom outside the post office who says Idris is innocent. Tom takes the fall for everything and is arrested. Idris is freed and given his pension. The coworkers are shocked and Gloria is frustrated because she’s definitely happy Tom did the right thing, but also upset he now has to go to jail for it. Tom is charged with “answering god’s mail without authorization,” a crime I did not know I needed to avoid being charged for.
In court, Rebecca represents Tom and the prosecutor is Sam McMurray but more importantly the judge is played by Livia Soprano (Nancy Marchand) so this is already going great. I love court movies but I hate court procedure, go figure. The prosecutor was apparently married to Rebecca at one point. He has a succinct opening statement and Rebecca tears a bunch of paper and bricks her opening statement. Next, a bunch of witnesses testify to not really knowing Tom, assuming he was a nice man. After a seemingly successful prosecution, Rebecca tells Tom he could get up to sixty years for this.
After court recess, Tom’s coworkers take the stand and state that Tom has been set up, arguing that a con man wouldn’t do good deeds. Vladek states that god was speaking through Tom and also takes the blame for covering everything up. The prosecutor goes haywire as this is a very unprecedented turn of events, and Judge Livia Soprano tells him to shut up after he asks if fictional characters will be coming in to confess as well.
The prosecution makes a very convincing closing argument and court is adjourned until the morning. Gloria writes to Tom and tells him she’s proud of him and has faith. The next morning in court, Rebecca brings dogs in as the witnesses for her closing argument so we know this is going to be a blast. She has Tom play a wastepaper basket like a drum and she tells a story of prehistoric evolution or something while doing a weird dance. She then sets a treat down between the two dogs whom she insists are friends. She shows how the healthier dog, despite loving the sicklier dog, took the treat for himself because animals act on instinct not on feelings. Rebecca argues that humans are able to help their friends because they can recognize when others are in need. She argues that Tom did everything he did for others and not for selfish reasons.
Tom is asked to take the stand and he has a pretty decent 90’s normcore blazer and jeans fit going on. He confesses that if he could have scammed the people that he ended up helping, he would have, but he couldn’t because there was nothing to take. He states that all they had was faith, which seemed absurd to him at first as he saw no reason to reassure that faith. He confesses to wanting to appear to be a better person to impress Gloria. As he continues, a large commotion happens on the street, and a bunch of postal trucks arrive with signs calling for Tom’s freedom. Tom states that he changed and found things more rewarding after he stopped trying to hustle people. Judge Livia Soprano doesn’t believe him because he’s a con artist and his talent is convincing people what he says is true. Tom confesses he doesn’t know how to convince her he’s being truthful.
Outside the courthouse, every single postal vehicle in the area has blockaded the street, demanding for Tom’s freedom and threatening to not do their job if he is sentenced. The Postmaster General barges in and demands the judge let Tom go so that the postal system can get back to work, as it’s the busiest time of year. The judge finds Tom not guilty and his coworkers rejoice. Outside, Tom greets the crowd and kisses Gloria. The news reports that Tom’s good deeds will carry on past the holidays and Dooley gets his old route back. He makes peace with the dogs he had feuds with. And that’s our movie.
Honestly, this was a pretty solid bad flick, even with the religious theme. Somehow the cast is a ton of great names, and if a movie is going to be about religion, at least it’s more just a generic “be good to others” sentiment and not fearmongering about an eternity in hell, but maybe my relief at that just shows how low the bar is set. I went to catholic school my whole life so I feel like I can differentiate between deep religious propaganda and a feel-good story with religious undertones. I think this is more the latter. While it’s not the funniest movie, nor the most realistic, it is at least entertaining. Don’t mind that pesky 12% on Rotten Tomatoes. It deserves at least a 17%. If you’re trying to check it out, it is currently on the Pluto app which I normally love (they are the first app to have one of my favorite uncelebrated sitcoms, Becker, available for streaming), but this viewing not only glitched out and started over on me, but there was a commercial break literally every three minutes which is just absurd, so maybe wait until it goes to a different app to check it out. Or not, whatever. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.